BACKGROUND

Shared-Use Mobility (SUM) commonly encompasses ride sharing, car sharing, ride hailing, microtransit, mobility on demand, and vanpooling services and systems, as well as other forms of transportation services shared among users, as defined in TCRP Research Report 188. The emergence of SUM practices in urban areas raises the question of how any of these practices can be applied in less populated areas. There may be an opportunity to use these urban SUM practices to address the unmet transportation needs in less populated communities. SUM applications have been successful at connecting people to mobility options, and there is increasing interest by small urban, rural, and frontier communities to pursue partnerships/SUM practices as a means to improve overall mobility and accessibility.

In less densely populated areas, fewer private transportation options, greater distances between origins and destinations, limited public transportation staff and resources, and a limited supporting infrastructure (e.g., wireless cellular network coverage and broadband) create challenges to successfully implement SUM options. However, some of these SUM options from urban areas may be properly scaled.  

Research is needed to further existing research in this area to aid state departments of transportation (DOTs) in providing technical assistance to public transportation providers in order to meet the increasingly varied transportation needs of communities.

OBJECTIVE 

The objective of this research is to provide state DOTs and public transportation providers with a report and implementation guidebook on innovative applications for integrating public transportation in less populated areas with SUM services and providers. For this research, SUM services include ride sharing, car sharing, ride hailing, microtransit, mobility on demand, and vanpooling services/systems. The report include case studies of urban, rural, and frontier partnerships, highlighting challenges and solutions addressing the following:

• ADA accessibility,

• regulatory, policy, and funding issues,

• service and cost efficiency,

• scalability to small urban, rural, and frontier communities,

• liability concerns, and

• data security.
  
  

STATUS: Research is complete. The Final Report is under review.